I guess I started this blog as a place to archive things I love to organize them into little chunks of inspiration. Over the past couple of days of being introduced to this world it really started to open me up to the idea of tying this into my creative outlet which is songwriting. In 2001, I finished making my first record in Brooklyn, NY with fellow writers Donovan Guidry and Seth Gold. ( I'll dig into the actual experience of making the record later.) This record was the very first time I put my whole self into the idea of a creative project. I had some musical talent at the time but more of a talent of condensing life experiences into songs. After a three year exploration of songwriting, music lessons and recording classes, "So Long" was born. The whole project had that handmade feel to it. All the preproduction was done in our apartment in Williamsburg and we even had fellow artist friend and stick ball player, Mac Premo design handmade art work for the album cover. (above)
Everything happened so fast, I went from a simple day to day lifestyle of loving the recording process to signing a deal and having to hit the road. While in my younger years, the thought of being a well known artist was an appealing idea. It's appealing until you're smack dab in the middle of a marketing campaign and they're taking the thing you love the most away from you, recording! I don't want to go to far into this but it is important to get to the place where I am today.
I toured for two years until I refused to play a few shows and then finally got dropped from the label and then by management. Though disappointed, I was relieved of the stresses that all the attention created for me. I no longer had a say so of my daily schedule and everything was laid out in an agenda and there was no more of those long stretches of time to think, read and record. But now all that was behind me.
I hit the road with my recording equipment to make whatever came to me as cheaply as I could. This was my view for two weeks, outside a Paris cafe window in the Latin Quarter. I finally had time to daydream again. So anyway, over the past four years I guess, I would go on to make two records. The first one "Louque the Drifter", a travel record I began in Paris and then a new project with the bassist Josh Werner called "Royal Vagabonds". I'll go into these at some point later. After these projects, I never really pursued the same avenues the first record took me down because of the way the whole industry thing worked. It all feels like an old formula:
Make Record+PR+Touring+A little selling out=success!
So my inability to put myself into this formula has led me to constantly creating new music and selling a song or two a year to film and television and working other jobs to keep the music pure. My friends however light into me at dinner sometimes for not being out there and successful, but they have no idea of the what it feels like to be on the artist side. This leads me to why I'm rambling on. I'm a huge music fan and would love it if some of the artist I love would post blogs and tell stories or show me things that inspire them. I have encountered people in different cities that have a connection to my first record and they share beautiful stories of what the music did for them and their loved ones. This is why I make music! And this is my blog, an extension to music. If the album is failing to the idea of cheap singles and artwork is on a jpeg and one can't open a record and devour the liner notes and there are no record shops, then what is the future of discovery in music? I don't know, but this makes me feel like I have a little nook in the big world of music. I'm finally making peace with the bitterness of the past and am open to sharing again. May music lead me back into the wilderness!
